Engineering leaders must write extensively for their jobs, and their writing needs to be professional, reader-focused, and error-free. What leaders write in particular can affect productivity and the bottom line, so the written communication that leaders create must be clear and concise. In this course, you’ll learn essential writing skills that you can apply in your daily activities on the job as an engineering leader. You’ll learn key principles in
• Approaching various engineering genres
• Using the writing process to create quality documents
• Making your writing structured
• Making your writing clear and concise
• Handling style, tone, and voice
Selected materials courtesy of Communication Faculty at Rice University - all rights reserved.

Рецензии

RR

Learned a lot on how to build paragraphs and use active voice instead of passive. Little details really make a difference when communicating in writing.

CK

May 04, 2018

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

A course for every one. Good representation of the different aspects of writing.

Из урока

Week 2: Developing Paragraphs and Writing Reports

Paragraphs play an important role in your writing. If your paragraphs are poorly written, your readers can't follow your thoughts. In this module, we'll talk about what makes a powerful paragraph and how to develop your paragraphs so readers understand your ideas. We'll also talk about what goes in to writing good engineering reports.

Преподаватели

Gayle Moran

Lecturer in Professional and Engineering Communication

Beata Krupa

Lecturer in Professional and Engineering Communication

Текст видео

Known-to-new construction is another technique that helps your paragraphs flow smoothly and helps your readers easily follow your thinking. Like with echo words, readers don't usually notice that you're using this construction. But when you don't use it, they may recognize that your writing doesn't flow quite right and they're having to work hard to make sense of things. The key to this construction is presenting old or familiar information before you bring in new information. Let's start by defining known and new information. Known information has these characteristics. It was previously introduced in the text. It's known from the context or the situation. It's easily inferable from previous statements. It's part of shared background information. Refers to an anchor of known information. Information is considered new if readers can't immediately bring it to mind as they read. This includes new ideas. Ideas that were mentioned so long ago in the text that readers don't have them in mind. Ideas that are part of the reader's world knowledge, but are so unrelated to the topic, that readers won't have them readily accessible. Readers process information faster when they see something known or familiar before any new information is introduced. Let's look at an example. I'm going to color code my information. Blue is for information that's familiar, or known, and pink is for information that's new. The first part of the paragraph is well done. It starts with information that's generally understood by most readers and follows with information that most people won't know. The analysis is mentioned again. And since it was at the beginning, it's now considered known information. And the sentence continues with new information. Now we move on to a statement about the effects of temperature on ductile-to-brittle transition. Here, readers are starting to wonder where this information came from and what it relates to. They're starting to think that maybe it's related to the oxygen and sulfur, how the steel was made, or low carbon. At the end of the sentence we're given the familiar information and we find out that it relates to the high oxygen content. This same things happens in the next sentence. The information that comes first is not clearly related to anything until we get to the end of the sentence. Reading this paragraph is starting to feel choppy. And I'm having to work to figure out how all of the content relates and flows. The last sentence also has new information at the beginning that we can't understand or put in context until we get to the end of the sentence. Let's rearrange the known information and the new information, so the paragraph flows logically and smoothly. The opening is already in the known-to-new structure, so we won't change anything there. But in the next sentence, we can put the high oxygen content first. It's already been mentioned, so we know where it's coming from. When we add the new information, it's context is clear. We do the same for the next sentence. Put high sulfur content, which is known information, first. And follow it with what it results in, or the new information. And again, with the last paragraph. And now readers aren't looking backward to find context and meaning. They're moving from beginning to end with a clear flow and information that unfolds logically and smoothly. It's important to make sure your paragraphs are cohesive so your readers can easily follow your thoughts. Use echo words, transitions and signals and known-to-new construction to make your paragraphs flow logically and smoothly.